West Anglia Scale Model show hosted by Norfolk IPMS Scale Club, 25 June -show report

 

Held at Littleport Leisure Centre just south of Ely, near Cambridge on Sunday 25 June. A three hour drive for the club but four of us made it. Excellent facilities and quite a big show, 300 public visitors and that number again of traders, clubs etc -  over 50 tables and stands Lots of pictures to come. Met lots of nice people, including 'David' of Scale Hangar 182 you-tube channel and Stu Fone, editor of Airfix Model World. A recently retired Sqn Ldr of  No. 2 Sqd (Tornados) was displaying his Tornado models on the Tornado SIG table. Steve M and Billy of the host club were real gents and Steve - with over ten years service on RAF Buccaneers - was a font of knowledge; who knew that XT 271 was a 'rogue' ship that nobody wanted to fly and which was constantly kept shuttling back and forth between units and maintenance depots as no-one could keep it  in service! (It ended its career with its RAF roundels over-painted with Italian markings ! Anyone got the pictures?). Best attendance and best 'profits' (for charity) for the club on only their second show at this venue. A look at some tables and models follow. The Dornier Do. X (see below) was judged 'best' aircraft model.

East Kent Scale modellers table - Bob won a 2nd place in the 'Armour' category

A selection of KP MiG 21s by Peter Terry of Clacton IPMS

Weald Foundation Open Day June 2023 - Jagdpanther, Sdkfz 251

 

new Airfix 1:24th Spitfire Mk IX - two new builds

 

two new builds of the top-notch new-tool Airfix 1:24th Spitfire Mk IX   -  built here by two members of East Kent Scale Modellers, Henry (31st FG) and Bill. Decals are two of the kit options, the third being for a French machine. 

1/72 - PZL TS-11 Iskra by Arma Hobby - Iskra Bis DF 'Expert' set build (part 1)

 

The PZL TS-11 Iskra (or 'Spark') is a Polish jet trainer and light strike aircraft, developed and manufactured by aircraft company PZL-Mielec. It first flew in the year of my birth, 1960, with an imported British jet engine and was notable as being the first domestically-developed jet aircraft to be produced by Poland. The Iskra was designed to meet a requirement by the Warsaw Pact countries for a basic trainer. Although it lost the contract to the Czechoslovakian L-29 Delfin the Poles kept it and put it into service. It is a real Cold War relic, having flow with the Poles for over 50 years. Some went to India. Up until recently examples of the TS -11 flew with the Polish AF Biało-Czerwone Iskry aerobatics display team. This kit was one of Arma Hobby's first injection molded 72nd scale products. This 'Expert' set comes with photo etch and acetate film for the instrument panels and masks.

A few of my photos of the Iskra on display at the RAF Manston History museum. This machine was previously owned by TG Aviation (ex-Red Arrows pilot Ted Girdler) at Manston before being bought by the museum in 2013 and repainted in the Polish aerobatic team colours.  

with thanks to "Tommy" -I couldn't have got this far without referring to your build!

Starting with the ejection sheets, these have a couple of details that should be replaced with PE, most notably the foot rests. The assembly instructions aren't very helpful to say the least. I just couldn't figure out how the etch should work - in the end I decided that the plastic parts looked just fine! 

 This is an "old-school" method of getting dials and other details - no prepainted PE here. A printed sheet of acetate that is painted on the reverse - although that is not stated anywhere on the Arma instruction sheet, and, again I doubt I'd have realised that without referencing Tommy's build!  But given that this image is about 3x actual size it is impossible to see anything anyway! Note film is supplied for the (gun)sight in the front cockpit and the 'screen' that blocks off the two cockpits.

Despite having a tray of greys I didn't have any 'Dark Ghost Grey' for the cockpit walls so used 'Light ghost grey' instead. Apparently the 'Dark' version was made by adding black to the lighter colour. Although the ejection seats can be left out until near the end of the build I preferred to put them in the cockpit. The instrument panels will 'balance' ingeniously in the 'cut-outs' on the sills. I didn't use the PE seat belts as I much prefer to use wine-bottle foil. 

Lt Urban Leonard 'Ben' Drew, 375th FS, 361st FG "Yellow Jackets" RAF Bottisham - P-51 D 'Detroit Miss'

 
One of the latest 'dogfight double' sets from Airfx brings us their newer tool P-51 D and Me 262 kits. Since I completed my Italeri P-51 in Drew's markings years ago  (above) I've tried to find out more about Drew's P-51 D. Urban 'Ben' Drew's 361st FG P-51 is generally portrayed with red trim. Popular illustrations show the wingtip, fin tip and canopy rail in red. However the 375th squadron colour was blue. The aircraft name was on a red background, but as for the rest..The recent Airfix 'Dogfight Double' box is just the latest to show Drew's machine with red trim.

And then this image popped up on FB recently. Eveidently a film still but I'm not entirely sure what it depicts - aside from 361st FG CO Landers machine 'E2 -I' in the foreground. But the machine behind it seems to have both red and blue trim.  Blue canopy rail but top of the fin, gear doors and wingtips in red.. note too the black bar on the fin.

This image (below) tends to suggest that the trim on Drew's machine was red; the same colour as the trim on the canopy rail. Note no tonal difference from the red of the German flag. At some point the a/c rudder was painted in the squadron colour. The aircraft name was on a red background....

 

US WWII fighter pilot memoirs - Mustang Ace Bob Goebel

  I was wondering what the best American fighter pilot memoirs are. I know that several stand out of course, such as Edwards Park’s wry "Nanette", described elsewhere as a " whimsical and moving account of a young pilot thrown against the aggressive Zero and Oscar pilots of Imperial Japan in the less-than-stellar P-39 Airacobra". Regarded as a classic of the South-west Pacific war - 'Nanette' was the name of his aircraft - it was sold as a novel (perhaps leaning on the 'Catch 22' popularity of the seventies), but, apparently, most of what he wrote did actually occur. Set in New Guinea before the Allied Air Forces had air superiority it is now regarded as a very well written memoir of the period. 'Nanette' was actually a P-400 (taken over from RAF order), and had worse performance than the P-39s which were sent to the Fifth Air Force in Australia, for service in the South West Pacific Theatre.

 Donald Lopez’ "Into the Teeth of the Tiger" is a memoir from a P-40 and P-51 pilot in China who later became deputy director of the National Air and Space Museum, not forgetting of course Robert S. Johnson’s 'Thunderbolt!', a gritty account of the early days of fighter operations by P-47s against the cream of the Luftwaffe, similar to 'Mustang Pilot' by Richard E. Turner ( a disappointingly slim volume)  or John Foster’s 'Hell in the Heavens', about a Marine fighter pilot in the Southwest Pacific. However I am not a fan of Anderson’s 'To Fly and Fight'  (357th FG Mustang pilot’s memoir of the 1944-1945 European air war) As for his friend Yeager, the less said the better. I much rather prefer the far more modest and intelligent Robert Goebel's 'Mustang Ace'.

Goebel joined the 31st FG, the leading fighter group in the Mediterranean, as they turned in their Spitfires for new P-51s. Within weeks, Bob Goebel had flown his first combat missions and had lost his element leader, shot down in a swirling dogfight. But he mastered the art of combat flying. A steady succession of bomber-escort missions over southeastern Europe slowly and then more rapidly forced Lieutenant Goebel to settle in and master aerial gunnery and the mentally taxing high-speed dogfights in which he became engaged. At last, he shot down his first German fighter. And he advanced to positions of leadership, in due course leading the entire 31st Fighter Group deep into enemy territory. At length, he shot down a fifth German and thus became an ace - a P-51 Mustang ace. And then he shot down three Germans in one day on a mission to Ploesti, Romania. He flew to Russia and back, and supported the invasion of southern France. In the end, by September 1944, he had eleven confirmed victories to his credit and was one of the 308th Fighter Squadron's most respected combat leaders. When he was sent home at the end of his combat tour, Captain Bob Goebel was not yet 22 years old. Post-war he was a physicist with NASA (IIRC) and his memoir brims with vivid descriptions of flying and fighting in a high performance WWII fighter. He passed away in February 2011.

US naval fighters of the 50s by Peter Booth

.. 

A neat line-up of 50s fighters by Peter Booth comprising the Hasegawa Cougar, Tiger and Crusader, Fujimi Cutlass, Emhar Demon and Tamiya Skyray. All in 1/72 and pretty ancient kits painted in Xtracrylic light gull gray and white.